Tangent II

Since the last post, the Samurai have remained resolutely in the box. The commissioned tanks have moved on, a bit, and I've taken to getting very cross indeed with a handful of 28mm Adventurer types from Red Box Games. They are exceptionally detailed, exceptionally fine detail, and making me realise I'm not quite the painter I thought I was.

They are to be used for a Labyrinth Lord RPG campaign I'm slowly putting together - a bit of good old fashioned dungeon bashing.

The Brytenwalda bits have stopped - although there's only half a dozen cavalry on the painting bench.

There's also talk amongst the gaming group on replacing 40K for something else, which might see yet another £50 thrown at something I'll spend too long fussing over painting, and far too little time pushing round a table. Probably Pig Iron's Kolony Militia range, as their Lo-Fi feel appeals to me.

Tangent

A little update on a sudden swerve to the right - a large box of 15mm Samurai arrived this morning from Museum Miniatures. Excellent service considering I ordered them only yesterday morning!

20 Samurai horse, 50 Samurai foot, 40 Ashigaru, and 20 Ashigaru archers - complimented by all manner of accessories which seem to have accompanied the feudal Japanese to war.

Great miniatures - although on the large/chunky side for 15s - and looking forward to painting them up for Impetvs.

Not, it should be said, my first choice for gaming - if left to my own devices I probably would have ended up with a 1st Crusades army - but gaming chum and all round good guy Pete and his irrepressible enthusiasm for the period didn't give me much choice. Now that they've arrived I'm much happier, and can already visualise them as a great horde of Crimson and Emerald armour.

Brytenwalda played

Finally got to run Brytenwalda out this evening with my erstwhile chum's Scots-Irish getting a bit of drubbing at the hands of my Romano-British.

So, the rules (or, more accurately; the RULES).

Fast, fluid, and complete carnage. Considering that they're free, and in version/edition 1.1, very impressed.

There was some little oddities - such as a unit of 12 shield totting spearmen being statistically invulnerable to a unit of 6 javelin throwing Irish due to the way the modifiers work, and some open-to-interpretation bits on combat casualties. But as these rules are open source and explicitly state they're there for the tweaking, I think our discussed modifications may tidy it up a bit.

Firstly the casualty system need clarifying (or trimming down) to only those directly in combat, rather than the whole unit - otherwise one spearman can theoretically wipe out an entire unit.

Secondly I'll be putting some thought into how the archery can be effective against huge blocks (indeed, it should be better against large targets)

Thirdly just need to decide if a unit gets two or more combats per turn (one each time a unit engaged in the combat is activated)

Fourth would be to make orders issued at the beginning of the turn - although this will slow things down.

That's it - so all in all very good for no money and early edition.